Neuroscience Hacks: Journal of Clinical Psychiatry and Neuroscience

The Healing Power of Pleasure

Tolerating and embracing all of our emotions can be made easier by realizing the symbiotic relationship between pain and pleasure. This is essential for improving our ability to enjoy ourselves in the present and be happy in the long run.

The Connection between Discomfort and Enjoyment

The more extensive research into pain has contributed significantly to our understanding of what, counterintuitively, makes it possible for us to experience pleasure. The pathways for pleasure and pain are found to be intertwined when we look more closely at the brain correlates of pleasure.

Our survival network includes this symbiotic relationship between pleasure and pain. Both of them should cause us to feel viscerally human. In the brain, pleasure and pain are interconnected and serve as signals to draw our attention, causing us to approach objects in order to meet our needs and avoid potential harm. We experience depressive, vulnerable, anxious, and disoriented feelings when these signals are interrupted; these are all signs of anhedonia, which is the inability to experience satisfying pleasure. Avoiding our unpleasant emotions can lead to emotional bluntness and a diminished capacity for joy.

All mammals have innate pain pathways that detect painful stimuli and respond by releasing chemicals that reduce pain. These innate mechanisms that block pain trigger specific parts of the brain to release feel-good internal opioids (endorphins and enkephalins). Pain serves as a survival cue, sending signals to the brain that tell us to fight, run away, or freeze. Our naturally occurring pleasure chemicals are produced as a result of these wired-in pain relief mechanisms.

In my research, orgasm and genital stimulation both turned on the "pain circuits." The pain-pleasure pathway's observed activation offers unmistakable proof of the biological underpinnings of genital stimulation's pain-relieving effects. In fact, when specific neurochemicals are released to control pain during childbirth, our internal opioids can help.

Our inability to tolerate any degree of unpleasant emotions exacerbates this link between pain and pleasure. We take an aspirin as soon as we feel any pain. We might be advised to take an antidepressant at the first sign of emotional discomfort. In fact, as a culture, we are taught to suppress our emotions. Ironically, this perspective on discomfort and pain exposes a serious misunderstanding of how we experience pleasure.

Liz Foddlein, the author of the well-known book Big Feelings, suggests that we embrace the discomfort of anxiety brought on by uncertainty and, in doing so, transform it into an energizing element of life's adventure.

We learn to avoid pleasure when we learn to avoid pain. Both emotionally and physically, we shut down. For instance, even though we may lose a pet and feel sad about it, most people eventually yearn for the joy of a new pet. People whose pain threshold is too high will completely avoid these emotions by refusing to get another pet.

Your experience of pleasure will also be diminished and numb if you are constantly in a mode of seeking pleasure while attempting to avoid discomfort or emotional pain. In order to maintain a healthy balance between our brain and body, we must experience both pain and pleasure.

My life's work has taught me that the key to enabling wholeness and well-being is the capacity to notice, experience, and tolerate the bodily sensations that go along with mental thoughts. We focus so much on our (often unfavorable) strivings, expectations, and thoughts that we barely notice what is actually happening in the body. When we do take care of our bodies, we frequently focus on what we would like them to be rather than what they are as they are. The body sends signals, and when they are blocked, there is no result. No response, no spark of creativity. No desire, no tingling. Many of my clients are in this situation because they have lost their ability.

Authors may submit their manuscripts online at the journal's website: https://www.pulsus.com/submissions/clinical-psychiatry-neuroscience.html

or as an e-mail attachment at editor.psychiatry@neurologyinsight.com

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